In my last post on Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, I look at conglomeration in world-building: How many seemingly disparate elements are brought together by an author to create a whole new sci-fi-fantasy world.
In this post, I'll continue with Pullman's His Dark Materials series by looking at the last two books in the trilogy: The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, and—oh, how the conglomeration became just too much…
Both The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass pickup pretty much immediately where The Golden Compass lets off (the trilogy is basically one big book split into three). However, we're bought, in the beginning of The Subtle Knife, the 2nd book, to the viewpoint of a new main character: Will.
But soon enough, Will meets our hero from The Golden Compass, Lyra, and they're off on derring-do adventure to seal the holes in the worlds, defeat Metatron (angel who's usurped God's role) and—oh yeah—eat that apple-thing in an Eden of sorts.
But let's focus on: world-building. Part of the skill of world-building for authors entails knowing when enough is enough, and when too much is just too much. An author has to have the temerity to cut elements out of their universe where necessary. Otherwise you drag down your story, your characters, your plot with the weight of your world.
As this reviewer on Goodreads noted:
It just got to be too much. Between the witches and the angels and the cliff-ghasts, the shadows, the specters, the ghosts, the Gallivespians, the armored bears....you come away feeling tha the author is trying to beat you over the head.
Why would Pullman do this? Why would he put just too many pieces (that don't naturally fit well together) into his story?
I think the answer lies in two places: (1) He's going for a crazy, jaw-dropping final battle scene with a thousand different players all fighting at once. Okay. Fine. But (2) Pullman's painted himself into a bit of a corner...
This other reviewer puts it succinctly:
Pullman severely restricts himself by rigidly adhering to classic stereotypes of Christianity. Not only does it hamper the depth and quality of the story, it also makes the fable-like quality of the book evaporate to some degree.
Let's unpack this.
The entire His Dark Materials series is based on Pullman's inspiration from John Milton's Paradise Lost. In this way, Pullman is not just trying to tell a great fantasy story (which he by and by does), he's also bringing in allegorical aspects of Paradise Lost (especially innocence lost during the transition from childhood to adulthood), in an effort to attack Christian dogma.
But I think Pullman painted himself into a corner (severely restricts himself, as the reviewer said) by having to retell storylines already written—namely, war in Heaven, Devil vs. God, Adam and Eve storylines. As a result, Pullman reaches out to the stars for other material than that of Genesis or Milton's Paradise Lost and, thereby, ends up pulling in all sorts of new and old mythological creatures. All sorts of humans and sentient beings. All sorts of parallel universe oddities. And he crams them all in there. Maybe this is meant to explore the actual fallout of having many different beings from many different worlds all meeting in one place, but instead it ends up overwhelming the reader. We lose focus on the main character(s). We lose focus on the plot. And we lose focus on the actual allegory Pullman wants us to look at.
Still, a lot of people really enjoyed the series, or rather, this one big book split into three.